Page 41 of Unforgotten

She was starting to look like she was going to faint. Or maybe throw up. “Why don’t you have a seat, Ms. Conway.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“No. I’m just trying to understand. Why don’t you show me one?”

“Okay.” Opening the desk’s right-hand drawer, she pulled out a stack of neatly arranged cards. “Here you go.”

He took the stack from her and glanced at the first few in the pile. At the top of each one was a printed name, an email address, a phone number, and a home address. Nothing too out of the ordinary there. Especially since she was the president’s personal assistant.

But that was where the usual information ended. Below the basic facts was the employee’s birthday, highlighted in color. Then there were several handwritten notes. The employee’s spouse and children’s ages were listed. Sometimes a pet was noted. On other cards, the days a person had taken off were noted. On others, there were notes about the employee’s favorite food or flower. Finally, on about eight or ten of them there were dark check marks at the top.

“What do these mean?” he asked.

Her eyes widened before they squeezed shut. “Oh no.”

“Ms. Conway?”

“They ... well, they’re notations I made when they were rude.”

“To whom? You?”

She nodded. “Yes. Or to Mr. Burkholder.” She winced. “Or they were rude or mean in general.”

Pulling over a chair, he sat down next to her. “Did someone ask you to keep these notes?”

“No. I mean, kind of but not really.”

“Ms. Conway, I’m here to investigate the break-in. To see if the fire that was set really could have been a diversion. If you think that one of the cards might have been taken, I need to have a good idea about why something like that would happen.” Looking at her closely, he added, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I do.”

“So?” Honestly, he’d gotten more information out of men questioned for grand theft auto.

“So, to answer your earlier questions, yes and no.”

“Explain, please.”

“I mean, I started writing note cards on each person in the company as a way to help Mr. Burkholder.” She relaxed a bit. “You know, if he has a meeting with a longtime employee, he wanted to make sure he asked after their wife or children. That kind of stuff.”

“That makes perfect sense to me.”

She smiled. “It worked so well, and Mr. Burkholder was so appreciative of my notes, that I started to add more details.” She lowered her voice. “Say if, um, a man’s wife was going through cancer treatment. Mr. Burkholder might have known that, but he could’ve forgotten the exact details of the cancer when he had a meeting with the employee. It wouldn’t do if”—her voice drifted off as she flipped through the cards and put one on top—“if he asked Arnie Pyle about Lizbeth but she’d died.”

“I see. So, is that where the other notations came from?”

“Yes. I’m afraid I got a little too diligent. It all started on a particularly bad day. See, one of our employees had an upcoming meeting, so I was getting his note card out. And I remembered hearing that he’d gotten a divorce. So I had to see if that was true. It was. So I told Mr. Burkholder, you know, just to be on the safe side.”

“Because you didn’t want him to put his foot in his mouth.”

“Exactly.” Her happy smile faded. “Except that man was really mean to Mr. Burkholder and started yelling at him about needing a pay raise. He didn’t even care that our boss had taken the time to ask how he was doing after the divorce.”

“So you put a check by his name.”

“Yes.” She sighed. “I was never going to tell anyone about those checks. Honestly, it started to become something of a game to me.”

“A game?”

“Well, you might be surprised by the things some people say to me. They aren’t always very polite. I started writing little notes just to make myself feel better.” Her gaze flicked up to meet his. “And yes, I know I shouldn’t have done that.”

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